[To revert to] the main text: 'R. Eleazar propounded: Can the skin23 of an unclean animal be defiled with the defilement of tents?'24 What is his problem?25 — Said R. Adda b. Ahabah: His question relates to the tahash which was in the days of Moses,26 — was it unclean or clean? R. Joseph observed, What question is this to him? We learnt it! For the sacred work none but the skin of a clean animal was declared fit.

R. Abba objected: R. Judah said: There were two coverings, one of dyed rams' skins, and one of tahash skins. R. Nehemiah said: There was one covering27 and it was like a squirrel['s].28 But the squirrel is unclean!-This is its meaning: like a squirrel['s], which has many colours, yet not [actually] the squirrel, for that is unclean, whilst here a clean [animal is meant]. Said R. Joseph: That being so, that is why we translate it sasgawna [meaning] that it rejoices in many colours.29

(A parenthetical note regarding the rendition of tala ilan as squirrel in the above translation:

Jast., lit.,'hanging on the tree'. It is doubtful, however, whether a squirrel is meant, as the context shows that a striped (or speckled) animal of many colours is referred to.

Rabbi Natan Slifkin has a lengthy discussion of tachash in Sacred Monsters, and says the following about tala ilan:

)

The Peshitta, from the Syriac-speaking Christians also has sasgona, which makes me wonder whether this is a fanciful etymology designed to colorfully tie in the Targum to this particular peshat :

My inclination, then, is that there is a standard Aramaic word sasgona, rather than this being some composite, and that sasgona is either a color or animal.

10 I clothed thee also with richly woven work, and shod thee with sealskin, and I wound fine linen about thy head, and covered thee with silk.

And thus behold, they were already known."

(In another, parallelpeirush, Ibn Ezra deduces from this that tachash skin is thick, for one only makes shoes of thick leather. He further expresses the idea that this this leather was from some bovine species.)

In saying that it is a known species, based on the verse in Yechezkel, it would appear that Ibn Ezra aims to counter the Midrash, and Rashi.

The Targum there is mesan diykar, which thus means fine shoes. Rashi follows this. And so the Peshitta, like the Targum. Metzudat David takes it as "the skin of the tachash".

Mizrachi answers Ibn Ezra's point as follows:

Thus, his first suggestion is that there were two animals, and one of them was called both tachash and tala ilan, and that because this species had many colors, just like the tachash, it was called by this name. And this tachash was always present, but was a non-kosher species. The other tachash was the one which only existed for the short while in the midbar, and was a kosher species. A second answer he offers is that they preserved the skins of Moshe Rabbenu's tachash in order to make shoes later. But he finds reason to reject the second answer.

I am not persuaded by his first answer, either. This is his own invention, rather than the position in the gemara. For the idea developed in the gemara was the reverse, that the tachash was like the tala ilan in respect to being multi-colored, not vice versa. Not that the tala ilan was even called tachash! Nor is it convincing that they would name a common species for a once-occurring species that then disappeared.

A better answer for Rashi would be that tachash in that other pasuk in Yechezkel does not mean that particular animal, but rather as the Targum there, and Rashi himself, render it.

Turning back to Onkelos and sasgona, I would would note that sas is worm in Aramaic and that gevan is color, such that it may simply refer to a color of the sas worm. I could also point to the word argaman, which is Aramaic is ar-gevan, perhaps of similar construction. So, Onkelos might not be intending to highlight a particular animal with this, or endorsing this Rabbi Nechemiah beast of multiple colors theory, despite how Rav Yosef interprets sasgevana in the gemara.

This is what Jastrow (page 1009) has to say about the word:

Note his second translation of the word as "scarlet", in the context of scarlet shoes. This is the targum of Shir Hashirim 7:2:

He tells us to compare with Yechezkel 16:10, which is the pasuk above. Nothing in the pasuk itself tells us that this means scarlet. But by P. Sm., he means (Robert) Payne Smith, 2862, who gives a Persian derivation of this.

Looking it up in Payne Smith's Syriac dictionary, we indeed have this:

Where vermilion is any red color, while sky-blue or blue-black are other colors. I don't know enough Persian to know that this is accurate.

There is an interesting writeup of Tachash in Wikipedia. Here is some of what they say:

Hereupon the Israelites rejoiced at what they had seen and heard of their conductor, and were not wanting in diligence according to their ability; for they brought silver, and gold, and brass (bronze, copper,) and of the best sorts of wood, and such as would not at all decay by putrefaction; camels' hair also, and sheepskins, some of them dyed of a blue color, and some of a scarlet; some brought the flower for the purple color, and others for white, with wool dyed by the flowers aforementioned; and fine linen and precious stones, which those that use costly ornaments set in ouches of gold; they brought also a great quantity of spices; for of these materials did Moses build the tabernacle...

But I am not entirely persuaded by this quote, for how do we know that the blue or scarlet refer to tachash. The scarlet would be the orot elim me'adamim. Maybe the blue was from techelet? Maybe not, as this matches how some understand the Targum as well. At any rate, he continues:

A few paragraphs further on Antiquities 3:6:4 (Ant.3.132-133) says:

There were also other curtains made of skins above these, which afforded covering and protection to those that were woven, both in hot weather and when it rained; andgreat was the surprise of those who viewed these curtains at a distance, for they seemed not at all to differ from the color of the sky; but those that were made of hair and of skins, reached down in the same manner as did the veil at the gates, and kept off the heat of the sun, and what injury the rains might do, and after this manner was the tabernacle reared.

Thus, sky-blue.

Also, Aquila:

Aquila of Sinope, a 2nd century CE native of Pontus in Anatolia, and a disciple of Rabbi Akiba, produces an exceedingly literal translation of theTanakh into Greek around 130. There is some (inconclusive) evidence that he retains the Greek ὑακἱνθινος (deep "blue") as the literal translation of the Hebrew [31]תחשים.

Here is Shadal's take, in Ohev Ger, just focused on our pasuk in Teruma:

He notes that it is always without a leading daled. It is umashkei sasgona, rather than umashkei de-sasgona, in all versions. One commentator (author of sefer יא"ר writes that this is because sasgona was not the name of the animal itself, but rather a name which refers to the many colors. Shadal finds support to this in the Aruch who brings a disease called sasgonia, where the skin turns many colors. {J: See Jastrow cite this, above.) And in truth, if the tachash were a species of animal which only existed for its brief time in the days of Moshe, it would not be possible that it would have a specific name in the Aramaic language, for the people of Bavel did not see it nor know of it.

A good point. I don't know that we should necessarily make so much of Onkelos' lack of a daled, given that Targum Pseudo-Yonatan on the same pasuk, and the Targum to Shir Hashirim do make use of the daled. But, even with the daled, it could be a color, or refer to some multi-colored aspect of it.

As a result of all this, I think that IF Rashi is taking sasgona as the name of the animal, as it seems to me that he is, he is perhaps justified on the basis of how it might be interpreted in the gemara, but I don't agree that this was the intent of Onkelos.

2 comments:

Joe in Australia
said...

The identification of "sas" as scarlet is interesting - scarlet is a color close to vermilion, which is ultimately named that after the "worm" (hence the name) Kermes vermilio that produces a crimson pigment that is identified with Tolaat sheni. Crimson itself also gets its name from Kermes.

So if "sas" means "worm" and "gevan" is "color" then the combination makes a lot of sense - worm-color is the color from the famous worm Kermes and we're very likely talking about skins colored scarlet with Kermes-extract.

indeed. (and i suspect that that was what was influencing Jastrow to just give scarlet.) we would then have to fit it into the pesukim. the previous pasuk has וּתְכֵלֶת וְאַרְגָּמָן וְתוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי וְשֵׁשׁ וְעִזִּים. so maybe these would be ram skins dyed with the aforementioned tolaas shani? it gives me slight pause that earlier to וְעֹרֹת תְּחָשִׁים we have וְעֹרֹת אֵילִם מְאָדָּמִים. perhaps two sorts of reddish dyes? See this post at Yeranen Yaakov that tolaas shani was orange.

i have reasons for preferring a sky-blue hue, which seems to be one of the possibilities, for some case. not just Josephus, but how this might help us put Rav Yosef in Bavli and Rabbi Yehuda in the parallel Yerushalmi in accord. That's for a follow-up post, hopefully soon.

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parshablog is published by (rabbi) josh waxman (joshwaxman [at] yahoo [dot] com), a grad student in Revel, a grad student in a Phd program in computer science at CUNY. i recently received semicha from RIETS. this blog is devoted to parsha as well as whatever it is i am currently learning.